Andy's Amazing
Pinball and Videogame
Test Rig Page

last
updated May 29, 2017

Every company that made videogames
and pinballs at some point knows their shit
is going to break down eventually. To avoid doing ALL the repair work at the
plant, its
best to make test rigs that qualified or clued-up technicians can utilise
in order to fix stuff.

These Test rigs were not made in large numbers, and most were not even really
available
to operators. They were mainly sold to and used by Distributors. This way
the service
industry could be regulated and ultimately racketeered on. If only X number
of distributors
had the means to reliably and quickly test/fix certain PCBs, then the repair
charge could be
standardised amongst the cartel of test rig owners.. A clever ploy at squeezing
some more
cash out of those pesky operators.

Because a lot of these rigs were
never generally available, they are pretty hard to find today.
Because they were used in the front line at distributors, often when they
became obsolete,
they were gotten rid of, to make way for the new stuff making it doubly harder
to find them.

In July 2004 I had the chance to
obtain a number of pinball test rigs when a nearby Pinball
Restoration company sold up after the owner unfortunately died. He shared
my interest
in test rigs, and had a 15 year head start on finding them, and was very successful.
When
the inventory was sold off, I was able to obtain the majority of the pinball
rigs that interested me.

STERN
SAM II - Service Assistance Module(sold in 2005 to someone in the UK)

Huuuuge coffin
like box on wheels with two handles.

Push it onto its
side to stop it rolling around

And crack open
the lid... Instead of finding a body in the coffin, you find a SAM II.
This one has had a lot of its PCBs removed already. Fortunately these
are the PCBs that you actually fix, so are bog standard pin boards.

Here's a look
at the horizontal panel

and here's a look
at the vertical panel

and here's a look
inside when you lift up the horizontal panel

here is the Test
pcb... this looks to be custom, dunno what it does yet though :)

this is what lays
behind the vertical panel. Looks like a complete set of playfield coils.

Zaccaria
Pinball test unit(sold
in 2005 to someone in Italy)

Appears to be
2 units to be used side-by side, each unit does a different job.

Unit #1 - this
one I think does something with the CPU board? the displays I don't think
correspond to game displays, but are maybe diagnostic displays?

unit #2- This
unit does the switch and lamp matrixes and game displays.

Inside unit #1,
the CPU unit?

this is whats
inside the CPU unit, not much, and the power connector has ripped out
I think.

Unit #2 - the
matrixes unit.

Here are the cables
in the flip-down front.

Under the button/indicator
matrixes panel

inside unit #2

D.
Gottlieb & Co. Test rig(sold
in 2005 to someone in the USA -
however, the recipient showed me that it got completely destroyed in
shipping which is very sad! )

this is a cool
looking rig, and nicely put together. All displays along one side with
2 main boards in front. A cool keypad and a screen of LED's indicate lamp
matrixes. The LED and button panel actually lays flat, but swivels up
on guide rails and wingnuts to a vertical position.

You can see the
rear of the unit has legs bolted on to keep it at an angle. There is a
carrying handle, and clasps so I assume this should have had a lid, but
sadly this is missing. I tested the unit, seems to work OK, but the main
board that's on there isn't doing much of anything. 3 out of 5 displays
light up, but I picked up a whole set of spare displays gotta try those
out at some point.

Williams
System 7 Test unit. (sold
in early 2010 in the UK)

Williams System
7 test unit. I believe this is an earlier system tester, but has been
upgraded and added to, in order to give it system 7 compatibility, most
evident is the extra head of displays and a driver board on the top.

This unit has
the following missing : 2 displays, speech, sound and CPU boards... Same
again though, these are standard pinball boards.
Inside this unit is a ROM board with a flying lead to plug into an EPROM
socket, it has 3 roms on it marked 'test' so I don't know what its for
yet, untested...

Williams
System 3 Test unit. (sold
in 2006 to someone in the UK)

Williams System
3 test unit. This is what i think the system 7 rig above is based on This
unit has a few missing pcbs, as you can see. Inside this unit is also
a ROM board with a flying lead to plug into an EPROM socket, it has 3
roms on it marked 'test' so I don't know what its for yet, untested...

overhead view..

Front view, you
can see this has a Williams logo on the front of the chrome panel :)

Atari
PAT9000's

This is the Pat
that was on my workbench at retrokade
for a number of years, it was mostly working, except the power relays
stick on sometimes. Its still very useable, Now owned by Danny P in the
UK... unknown serial.

This is a detail
of the serial number stickers and info etc.. you can see that it is serial
number UR00067, model number 33900

The front, looking
rather dirty, and various buttons knocked off, i have spares tho, so one
day i'll put them back on :)

the left hand
side, showing the auxillary connectors, used for testing trackbals and
other peripherals. These were also 'user ports' where you could re-route
various signals to (via the program plugs), so that you could hook up
external equipment or controllers to them.

Right hand side
view, these 2 connectors are for the main pcb connector harnesses, one
for each pcb (as controlled/programmed by the program plugs on the front.

'Display Cabinet'
- LED annunciation - also has overlays to show you whats what.

Atari
Superman Pinball Test RigThis appears to have been produced by hand at Atari in
very low
numbers just for distributers, If you have any more info, please contact
me!

Lots of annunciation
for switches and lamp outputs all on the one console.

wires out
of both sides for hooking up all the relevant pcbs

internal
shots - very neatly made, Atari quality.

Taito
Test Tech(this wasn't actually mine, it was on loan from
a fellow collector)

The case...
a nice and neat little package. This is basically just a signature analyser
with a neat Taito logo :)

Open it up,
to see the business end in the bottom, and a secret panel in the top.

Heres a closeup
of the main unit, you can see that it is capable of handling 6802s and
the 6809D and 6809V.

This is whats in the secret
panel, or false lid to be more accurate :) the pods and other associated
cables... We managed to find a manual on ebay, when it turned up,
it was just a photocopy, not like the aution photo :( some people
are just plain scammers.

The manual is not available,
i do not own this rig, so there's no point asking me :)